The Intervention
by David Scholes
Summary: An elder of the Tolden and his companion search an ancient battlefield for clues as to what prevented the destruction of the mighty Brell. Please read on.


The distant Future

Somewhere in Our Universe

The long search for truth had brought the two humanoid types to this place. The scene of the last known battle before the surrender. Though history still referred to it as the annihilation.

From their mountainous vantage point they looked out over the ancient battlefield. Strewn across a huge area were the largely disintegrated remnants of vast amounts of military hardware.

Urrle recognized some of the technology. It was advanced even by his standards and would have been state of the art for the time.

Two things stood out. A fallen warrior, almost perfectly preserved, and dressed in the light armor of the Brell. And something else. Something that seemed to have no place in this high technology battlescape. A small hammer with a head large in relation to its relatively short handle. The handle wrapped in some material and with a thong of the same material at the base of the handle.

"Does it mean anything to you?" Urrle asked of his companion.

The venerable ancient, the oldest living Tolden thought for a moment. "The soldier is probably the last soldier of the Brell to have died in battle, but the hammer, I don't know, something is tugging at my mind but I cannot place it"

"Arcane energies abound here" said Urrle "even I can sense them." "You, you must be almost overwhelmed by them" he added looking with concern at the Tolden elder.

"I recognize some of them" responded the old man "residual energies of he whom we never speak." "As to the other energies, they are associated with the hammer and I do not recognize them." Yet even as he said this, the elder felt something again tugging at his mind. Something from long, long ago.

"Looks like it was a fair fight then" quipped Urrle "one single Brell soldier against a full army."

"Only if you also count the downed star fighters and the starship we saw on the way in" said his friend, pulling up several over the horizon three dimensional images simultaneously. "I'd say he took them down as well."

"Of course there's the hammer" said Urrle quietly "we don't know what part it played in the battle here." "Like the Brell armor, the hammer seems totally undamaged, even in this hostile environment" he added.

'Brell armor can survive civilizations" said the elder respectfully "perhaps the hammer can to."

Urrle moved to touch the hammer and to lift it. As a very enhanced human his own natural strength would enable him to lift huge machineries, even a star fighter. With the exo-skeleton implants in his Tolden light armor this natural strength was multiplied many fold. Yet he was unable to budge the hammer even minutely.

Urrle gave up in unaccustomed frustration. The ancient ran a small instrument over the hammer. "It will require more than your strength to lift this hammer" he smiled. Intuitively the elder knew that no force, other than the rightful one, would ever be able to lift the artifact.

The old mans mind drifted to the past. To a time that he was just old enough to remember and to the events that had led to the answers that they still sought.

* * *

He remembered the Brell as they were. A race that, for long millennia, traversed the stars and even the dimensions as easily as ordinary men might walk to a house in the next street. A benevolent, near omnipotent race, that took it upon themselves to make up for what they perceived as Gods failings.

But even God has enemies.

Those many enemies formed an unwieldy alliance. Brought together with a single purpose. By a dark, vast and manipulative intelligence that may not even have been native to our plain of existence. An intelligence possessed of inconceivable power in its own right.

At first the reverses were small. Defeats of small groups of Brell starships and soldiers before the Brell could very quickly bring larger forces to bear. These were perceived only as minor set backs. Yet the orchestrated attack on empire continued to gather momentum. The aggressors constituting many, many different alien races had been drawn from the far flung reaches not only of our Universe but from myriad dimensions.

Even the mighty Brell were surprised by the level of coordination between such disparate alien races, cultures and technologies.

It became such that the attackers were everywhere at the same time, overloading even the Brell capacity to respond. An endless stream of starships of all shapes, sizes, and designs moved inexorably onwards and inwards to the very heart of the Brell Empire.

Starships, battlewagons, troop transporters, star fighters and star troopers, without end, grinding down the Brell, negating their technical advantage.

The once many friends of the Brell were conspicuous by their absence and lack of support. In one of the darker, if not darkest, times of our Multiverse it is to the eternal shame of us all that no one raised a hand in their defence.

With one exception.

It is now a simple matter of historical record that the inevitable destruction of the Brell home worlds never took place. A power, unquestionably of the first order, or perhaps even above that, intervened on behalf of this great race and saved it from destruction.

As the vast star fleets bore down upon the Brell home worlds a series of cosmic storms, the like of which have never been seen before or since, spread across their advance not merely stopping the advancing fleets but in fact annihilating them down to the very last star fighter.

The old man, the Tolden elder, knew that the historical record was sketchy beyond this point. Still, it was generally thought that the savior of the Brell then turned its attention to that dark entity that had sought their destruction.

Suffice it to say that neither entity was heard from again.

If the mighty Brell knew the identity of their savior they never said and that immeasurably, inconceivably powerful entity never came forth to take credit for its actions. Their was even speculation that the great battle had continued upward on to another plane of existence.

Whomever, whatever the true nature of that force it took no credit for its actions.

* * *

The Tolden elder's mind snapped out of its reverie and back to the present moment. He looked among the heavens sensing the energy configurations even before they were visible to his and Urrle's enhanced senses.

Urrle looked up in silence and in awe.

The two energy configurations descended planet ward at almost leisurely pace. Both configurations taking on most impressive human forms.

The old man, the Tolden elder, cried. Intuitively he knew that here now were the saviors of the Brell. Re-visiting the scene of the last battle and coming to claim what was theirs. "Lords" he called out to them as he bowed as low as his venerable frame would allow him. The seemingly older of the two majestic forms motioned for him to rise. While the seemingly younger of the two entities raised his hand and the hammer artifact whose inertia had defied Urrle's best efforts moved gently in to that entities hands

Then both entities looked on with respect at the long dead soldier of the Brell. At that moment the light armor of the Brell began to flow towards the younger entity enjoining with his own armor. The entity seemed untroubled as if such an occurrence had happened before.

Both of the impressive entities levitated skyward in their human type forms before returning to their energy configuration forms. They were then gone in moments.

The Tolden elder looked at his youthful companion. "I believe we have the answer to that which we have sought" he said, almost lightly.

"Who, what, were those entities?" said Urrle as they set about burying the long dead Brell soldier.

"Gods" responded his friend "gods from a place once known as Asgard, and from a time so ancient that I think everyone, even the Brell, had forgotten about them." "The oldest records suggest that they evolved on to another higher plain of existence."

"Yet they still found time to come back and help us" said Urrle "to save the Brell"

"The ancient records suggest it was their way" finished the elder "to be there, even when no one else would."

The two men continued the burial of the soldier in silence but both were smiling.

End


End file.
